The Story of Beautiful Girl (15 page)

Kate did something called praying, and Lynnie knew it was to ask for favors. Kate had once tried to explain Jesus Christ and Mary. Then Lynnie remembered hearing about God, who didn’t have a name. He had a tune, and her mother sang it when she lit candles every winter and they all ate chocolate coins in gold foil and Lynnie got a funny top to spin. But Kate did not sing this tune, and Lynnie did not know God’s name. So that meant she could not pray.

Instead Lynnie thought about the pictures that came after the pages she already knew. She imagined drawings of the baby on the farm with the old lady. The baby would be sitting up, standing, someday even running. She tried to see the color of the baby’s eyes or hair. Would they be hers? Or would they—No. The child
had
to look like her. The child
had
to be happy. The child
had
to make friends who would hum with her, ride blue-and-green horses, play with Betsy Wetsys.

She played this picture game with Buddy, too. Though she could only see him driving the tractor, fixing machines, handing her feathers. The pages would not draw themselves for him.

*    *    *

So Lynnie worried when Doreen came to her one day in Kate’s office. Lynnie had just finished drawing—though not the future she could not see. She was drawing the past she
could
see. Feathers of all colors, curling in the air like smoke.

Kate was locking the pictures in the drawer when Doreen came in, wearing her mail delivery sack across her shoulder, and said, “Someone’s looking for Lynnie.”

Kate immediately shut the door. “What are you talking about?”

Doreen explained she’d just been in the main office. A heavyset woman with brown hair in a ponytail had shown up and told Maude she wanted to visit with Lynnie. “Maude asked if she was your family, and she said no. Maude said that was against the rules, and she left.”

“Lynnie,” Kate said, “do you know why this woman would want to see you?”

Lynnie shook her head, but she knew it had something to do with her escape.

Kate thanked Doreen, and when she left the room, Kate opened the file cabinet. She paged through the pictures. Nothing like this woman was in them.

She sat down and folded her hands on the desk. She said, “I know you don’t want me to tell anyone, and I said I wouldn’t. But Lynnie, I’m terribly worried about the baby. You have a baby out there in the world. Your baby. This woman might know something about your baby.”

Lynnie looked at Kate. Maybe this woman knew the old lady. Maybe Lynnie could find out about the baby. Maybe Lynnie could even learn the color of the baby’s hair.

“And I’m asking you, I’m begging. Let me find out why she wants to talk to you.”

Lynnie thought a long time. Even if she couldn’t be with the baby, she could know about the baby. She could draw the pages she would never see.

No. She could not.

She looked away.

Kate set her fingers on Lynnie’s hand until Lynnie met her eyes. “I know you’re mourning the loss,” Kate said. “But I have to ask you something. Please be honest with me, and I’ll honor your wishes.” She took a deep breath. “Do you want me to go find your baby?”

Lynnie had not considered this.

“Just say I can do it,” Kate went on. “I’ll go find that old lady’s house and make sure the baby’s all right. I’ll tell you everything you want to know—and I’ll never tell another soul.”

It would be so wonderful. Lynnie could draw the missing pages. She could know she’d saved the baby. She could know she’d saved
her daughter
.

Except. If they found out, the pages would not look like what Lynnie envisioned at all. They would look like Tonette after Wanda finished with her. They would look like the animal after the dogs got through with it. They would look like what Lynnie saw in his eyes that night.

Lynnie stared down at the lighthouse. With the old lady, the baby would be safe. She looked back up into Kate’s eyes. Then she turned another page, a page she so longed not to turn.

“No,” she said.

1969

F
inally, after five months: a hut where he might rest.

Homan couldn’t believe his luck. A hut was jutting out from the bottom of a rock cliff. Standing in knee-high grass, freezing in a wind so strong that it made young trees bow, he stared at it in the dusky light. One story high, with two windows and a chimney, the hut was startling in this place without people and buildings. For months he’d been sleeping outside, huddling under a blanket he’d snatched from a clothesline, wishing the buttons on the rabbit-fur jacket didn’t fall so far short of their holes. If only he were narrower in the chest. If only he hadn’t lost Roof Giver’s shirt and jacket in the river, when getting to Beautiful Girl was as simple as going east. But his chest was broad, those clothes were gone, and the train had taken him west.

He’d had his first taste of luck after the initial forty nights, when he found a bag of old clothes in some woods. After that, though he still spent his days far from houses and shops and cars, looking over his shoulder for police and scrounging up anything to keep the hunger away, at least his teeth weren’t chattering, except at night. When the cold got too wicked, he’d venture into towns, staking out empty garages, houses with tucked-away places underneath porches. He hated sunrise, when his predicament would jolt him awake. Yet he loved sunrise, too, because
that was when he’d see them, right there in his mind. Beautiful Girl standing in the cornfield, hair blowing in the breeze. Little One in a crib, able to reach up now and touch his face. Just before he’d jump up to start running again, he would lift his hands.
Good morning, beautiful girls,
he’d sign.
I’ll be back soon as I’m able.

Now he set his blanket-sack on the ground, along with all it contained—his lost-and-found wardrobe, berries, a fishing rod and spear he’d made for catching meals, a tent, pocketknife, and canteen left at a campsite—and made his way through the high grass.

When he came up to the hut’s door, he pressed his palms flat against the wood, hoping that if anyone was inside, he’d feel vibrations. The door did not tremble beneath his hands, so he looked from one window to the other. There was no motion inside, just the reflection of the stars coming out like a crushed cube of sugar. He waited a moment, gathering courage. Then he reached for the knob and cautiously pushed the door open.

With the moon as his light, Homan could see a few feet inside. There was an overturned chair and a table with a broken leg, a stone fireplace built into a wall. On the mantel was the glint of tinfoil from a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. Maybe the smoker was just waiting to jump him. But the hut had the musty odor of a home long forgotten. Holding the door with his foot, he grabbed those matches and got one lit.

The room grew clear. The walls were lined with dusty shelves. The floor was bare, with weeds tufting up from the boards. And the far wall wasn’t the rock of the cliff. It looked like it went
inside
the rock. He saw a lantern on a peg and lit it. The fourth wall was a cave.

Holding up the lantern, he spun around to be sure he was alone. No one. He turned back to the cave. It was empty, except for a bed made of branches. No blankets, no pillows, no grizzled old man giving him the evil eye. If only he’d found a place like this when the
baby was coming instead of a cellar in a backyard. Then they would never have gotten chased out. Then they would never have gone for miles in the rain—or spent all these months without each other.

Lantern high, he ran to retrieve his blanket-sack.

Only when he closed the door and jammed the chair beneath the knob did he realize his luck was better than he’d thought: On the shelves were tins of fish and packets of beef jerky. He ate until he could eat no more, then lay down on his clothes, hiding in the cave behind rocks, in case anybody did break in. Relaxing for the first time in too long, he fell into a heavy sleep.

After bolting from the truck lot and the swarming police, Homan hadn’t planned on being alone for so long, only to end up finding refuge in a cave.

Instead, as he’d grabbed on to the rushing freight car, he’d felt pumped with hope that he’d get back fast to the Snare. All he had to do was keep fear at bay until they pulled into a train yard, then hop a boxcar back to the city he’d just left and find his way to the river. It wouldn’t be simple, but he could do it. He
had
to do it. So that night, stomach down to the metal, air currents ballooning the rabbit jacket and his pants, he’d pushed away fear by thinking of her. Beautiful Girl sneaking into the barn one afternoon, where she laughed as he taught her to milk cows. Beautiful Girl in Chubby Redhead’s office, where she wedged the radio in his pocket so he could feel the vibrations and they moved their feet in a slow dance. Beautiful Girl holding him in the cornfield, on what he would name the Day of the Red Feather.

Eventually, still gripping the train, Homan turned his head. He couldn’t tell how long he’d lain here, but the stars were the stars just before morning, and the landscape was countryside.

He realized he was on the run again. Yet he felt nothing like the rage that had overtaken him long ago, at the end of the last
Running, when the gates of the Snare had clamped closed. Furious with the police, the judge, and, yeah, himself—
You caught for speaking your name! You ain’t never mouth-speaking again!
—he’d then spent months fighting and throwing things. He didn’t belong there! He wasn’t no dimwit! His tantrums only got him put in the building with the most violent boys and a nurse feeding him a syrup that made his thinking muddy. Desperate for something, anything, better, he remembered how Blue had fought meanness in the world.
I don’t let nothin’ break me,
he used to say
. Not folk who think they better’n me. I got things to do, and being your big brother the highest one, and nothin’ gonna stop me from that.
Even through his mind-haze, Homan understood: Blue found his place in the world by giving himself to another. It galled Homan to consider doing that with droolers and head bangers. But he had to get his mind back.

So one day he saw that Shortie, who slugged anyone passing by, didn’t get to punching until his favorite guard left every night. Just before the shift change, Homan started rolling a ball to Shortie. It took a while for Shortie to care, but then the ball got his mind off his guard and the slugging happened less. Soon Homan started wondering who else needed giving. He took over diapering Man-Like-a-Tree. He figured how to get Whirly Top to dinner: Go up next to him, spin round and round like Whirly Top until Whirly Top stepped out of his whirly circle. One day Homan helped Big-Bellied Handyman set a window straight. Soon he started getting privileges.

Giving, he found, made him proud. And pride made him bolder with doing what he had a knack for—unclogging pipes, oiling hinges, driving the tractor. And doing a good job made him get more privileges. Finally he was almost as free as a Stuck-for-Life could get. Until, that is, Beautiful Girl grew into a woman and he wanted to be even freer.

*    *    *

Dawn rose through the hut’s window, and, as always, Homan reached toward the dream selves. Beautiful Girl was combing her fingers through her hair, her face up to the sky, smiling, as blossoms showered down from a tree. Little One, growing up fast, was crawling under the tree, pulling up clover. Even though Homan was far from sure about what had happened, he told himself Little One was in the safe hands of Roof Giver. Yet when he saw Beautiful Girl in the mornings, he pictured Little One with her, and then made his good-morning greeting to them both. Today, he remembered he didn’t have to jump up and run. In a hut with a locked door, he could lounge about as late as he pleased.

He’d long fancied the idea of staying in bed, starting when he was still in Edgeville and leaving boyhood behind. He’d wake thinking about a lady being in bed with him, and the saddle part of him would be all afire. He’d want to take care of business, and on the rare mornings when his brothers and sisters and Mama had gone off and Blue was out with Ethel, he would. Forget that luxury in the Running. Then he’d wake with his eyes darting and heart thumping and have to just get up and go. How he’d come to envy all the folks who could lock their doors. He’d see them through their windows, putting their arms around their women, kissing their lips, their neck, unbuttoning shirts, lowering the shade. Things were even worse at the Snare. If the guards caught a boy doing things to himself, they’d whack his fingers with a belt.

But no lady caught his eye for a long time. Even Beautiful Girl didn’t have that effect on him at the start. When he first saw her, she was young and he was digging a grave, and what made him pay notice wasn’t her long blond hair and wide, open face. It was how she cried as the coffin went into the ground. After that, he began noticing her across the dining room, walking the grounds: She never got pushy or hotheaded, she had a friend and visited a
redheaded guard. She didn’t smile much—and when she did it was sunshine. Only when she grew tall and took on the curves and walk of a woman did he realize she was as beautiful outside as she was within. Then, in the mornings, he thought of her. But once he knew there was a baby in her, and that she suffered when the boys did what they did, he decided to wait until after they were free.